meet Eitan Miller | Founder/Director of Boundless Creative

We had the good fortune of connecting with Eitan Miller and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Eitan, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I’ve been passionate about filmmaking for as long as I can remember. In middle school, I wondered if instead of just making short films with my friends, I could work with businesses and even make money doing what I loved. To build a portfolio, I made a few free videos for small businesses, including for a local deli.

A few months later, I got a message from the brothers who ran the deli. They wanted to make a cooking show, and they were willing to pay! Over the next few years we produced over 20 episodes which got over 50k views on YouTube, and I worked with other local clients from a chiropractor to a nonprofit backed by Jake Gyllenhaal.

That first lit the spark to bring together business and filmmaking.

In film school, I studied cinematography and I considered a career as a narrative cinematographer, but I ended up preferring the day-to-day of running a production company and found the career path more suited to my skill set.

Also, once you get a taste of having your own business, it’s hard to do anything else!

About 3 years ago I founded my current production company, Boundless Creative, where we help businesses, brands, and nonprofits tell their stories through video.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Boundless Creative is a boutique full-service production company specializing in documentary style story-driven content for brands, companies, and nonprofits. We’re based in NYC, but work on projects around the country and beyond.

It’s been very cool to work with some big brands, from filming with Shopify to Vogue to JP Morgan. Some of the projects I enjoy the most are the ones that make an impact. Helping national nonprofit Family Promise share their story (and beat fundraising records) was particularly rewarding as we were able to use video to tell some really important stories and fight family homelessness.

It definitely wasn’t easy getting started. As a 21-year-old without a big network or family connections in the industry, I didn’t have an easy path to clients. Still, I was determined to make it work.

I started by reaching out to the people I did know, and then sending many more cold emails. I was trying to use the same model I did 7 years earlier, but was amazed how hard it was to get people to take me up on the offer for a free video! Eventually, I was able to land my first few unpaid clients, which led to paid jobs down the line. To build a network, I was often going to upwards of 3 in-person networking events a week, and as I got more happy clients, I started getting inbound leads.

I learned it’s impossible to build a production company on your own. When I was getting started, I set up countless coffee meetings with experts in their crafts from sound recordists to focus pullers, and over time established a regular production crew for Boundless Creative.

One of the things I’ve learned hiring is that it’s most important to find people who are good to work with. There are a million talented people out there, but finding people you want to spend lots of time with (and who are hard workers) wins out over pure talent every time.

Also, a lot of creatives focus on making work that looks cool, but that’s not sufficient if you want to make great brand storytelling content. It’s only by understanding the business goals of a brand that you can truly make the most impactful videos.

I try my best to be a translator – understand a business or nonprofit’s goals and audience, and then shape that into a tangible video that communicates the message effectively with a focus on story.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
While I’m based in NYC, whenever I’m in LA I have a few spots I always come back to.

Melrose Trading Post is a massive flea market with a ton of cool stuff, the Academy Museum is one of the best curated museums I’ve ever been to, I love walking around Manhattan Beach, and it may be cliche but you can’t beat the views from Griffith Observatory.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’m so lucky to live in the time of the internet and YouTube, where information is shared freely for anyone to learn anything.

When I was young, I was inspired to make cool short films from Film Riot and Corridor Digital, I learned After Effects through Videocopilot.net, and about storytelling and equipment through countless others.

Now, I learn from different creators to teach me business, like Chris Do at The Futur and Shaan Puri/Sam Parr of My First Million.

I had these digital mentors before I ever met my real-world mentors, and I’m grateful they taught me so much.

Website: boundlessnyc.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eitan__miller/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eitan-miller/

Image Credits
Mike Schoenfeld, Ben Asciutto